What's your level?
A number from 0 to 7, in every sport you play, worked out from real results rather than self-belief.
Most people know roughly how good they are. What they do not know is how to say it to a stranger in a way that means anything. "Intermediate" means one thing to the person writing it and something else to the person reading it, which is how you end up in a game that is far too easy or one where nobody passes to you.
A level fixes that. It is not a score or a judgement on you. It is a key that opens the door to the right game.
You are not one level. You are several.
Lineup keeps a separate level for each of its eight sports. Being strong at one tells nobody how you play another, so the numbers are never mixed or averaged. A padel 4.2 who has just picked up badminton is a badminton 1.0, and gets matched as a beginner there, which is exactly what they are.
This is the part people find surprising. You are not a single rating. You are a padel number, a football number and a tennis number, and behind each one is a different room of people waiting for someone at that standard.
What each level means
| Level | Name | What it looks like on court or pitch |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | New | You have not played this sport before, or only once or twice. |
| 1 | Beginner | You know the rules and can rally, but contact and positioning are still inconsistent. |
| 2 | Novice | You can hold a rally and keep a game moving without it breaking down. |
| 3 | Intermediate | Reliable technique, deliberate shot choices, and you can read what the other side is doing. |
| 4 | Skilled | Consistent under pressure, with tactics that hold up against organised opposition. |
| 5 | Advanced | Strong technically and tactically. Competitive in the toughest social games. |
| 6 | Expert | Club or competition standard, usually with formal coaching or league history. |
| 7 | Elite | The top of the scale. Reached only through sustained results against strong opposition. |
Levels are held to one decimal, so most people sit between the named bands. A 3.4 is past Intermediate and moving toward Skilled. That decimal is the difference between a close game and a one-sided one, which is why it is there.
How your level starts
You begin with a short assessment for the sport you want to play: nine questions covering how long you have played, how often you play now, three specific skills in that sport, your own honest self-rating and your general fitness.
One of the nine is a knowledge check that only somebody who really plays the sport can answer. Padel players are asked what a bandeja is. Cricketers are asked what a maiden over is. Pickleball players are asked about the double bounce rule. It is not there to catch you out. It is there so that a self-rating alone cannot carry you into games you are not ready for.
The assessment can place you anywhere from 0.5 to 6.5. It deliberately cannot give you the top half level. Nobody starts at 7.0 on Lineup, however they answer. That has to be earned against real opposition.
How your level moves
After that, your level is decided by results. When a competitive game finishes and the score is confirmed, the level of everyone who played moves.
The comparison is against expectation, not just the win or loss. Beating players rated above you moves your level up more than beating players below you. Losing narrowly to a much stronger pair can still move you up.
A single match can never move your level by more than 0.5. No one game defines you, in either direction.
Only competitive games count toward your level. Friendly games are recorded and still count toward your history, but they do not shift the number, so a relaxed game with friends will not cost you anything.
Reliability: how sure the number is
Alongside your level sits a reliability percentage. It is worth being precise about this, because it is easy to assume it means something it does not.
Reliability is not about turning up on time, and it is not a rating of you as a person. It is simply how confident Lineup is that your level is currently correct.
It starts at 10 percent when you finish the assessment, because at that point the number is only your own account of yourself. It rises every time you play, faster for competitive games than friendly ones, and it eases back down if you stop playing for a couple of weeks and the number goes stale.
Its job is to control how much a single result matters. A new player with low reliability moves several times further after one match than an established player with a long record, whose level barely shifts. That is why a newcomer settles into roughly the right place within a handful of games instead of grinding upward for months.
Common questions
What level player am I?
Lineup works it out rather than asking you to guess. Nine questions give you a starting level, and the games you play from then on decide where it settles.
Can I set my own level?
Only the starting point, and only up to 6.5. The knowledge question makes over-claiming harder, and the top half level cannot be claimed at all.
What if my starting level is wrong?
It corrects itself quickly. That is exactly what low reliability is for: while Lineup is still unsure about you, each result moves your level a long way, so a few games are enough to find your real standard.
Does losing lower my level?
In competitive games it can, by at most 0.5, and only relative to what was expected. A close loss against much stronger opponents is a good result and is treated as one.
Which sports have levels?
All eight: padel, football, tennis, cricket, badminton, basketball, volleyball and pickleball. Each keeps its own separate number.
Then what
Every game on Lineup publishes the level range it is for. Once you have a number, you can see at a glance which games are worth your evening and which are not, and the people organising those games can see the same about you.
See everything Lineup does, or start with padel in Dubai.